strides
of their ambition; they could not supply all those Indians with the
necessaries they wanted, so that many of the natives had recourse to
the English settlements; and this commerce produced a connexion, in
consequence of which the British adventurers ventured to travel with
merchandise as far as the banks of the river Ohio, that runs into the
Mississippi, a great way on the other side of the Apalachian mountains,
beyond which none of our colonists had ever attempted to penetrate.
The tract of country lying along the Ohio is so fertile, pleasant,
and inviting, and the Indians, called Twightees, who inhabit those
delightful plains, were so well disposed towards a close alliance with
the English, that, as far back as the year one thousand seven hundred
and sixteen, Mr. Spotswood, governor of Virginia, proposed a plan for
erecting a company to settle such lands upon this river as should be
ceded to them by treaty with the natives; but the design was at that
time frustrated, partly by the indolence and timidity of the British
ministry, who were afraid of giving umbrage to the French, and partly by
the jealousies and divisions subsisting between the different colonies
of Great Britain. The very same circumstances encouraged the French to
proceed in their project of invasion. At length they penetrated from
the banks of the river St. Lawrence, across lake Champlain, and upon
the territory of New York, built with impunity, and indeed without
opposition, the fort of Crown Point, the most insolent and dangerous
encroachment that they had hitherto carried into execution.

RISE AND CONDUCT OF THE OHIO COMPANY.

Governor Spotswood's scheme for an Ohio company was revived immediately
after the peace of Aix-la-Cha-pelle, when certain merchants of London,
who traded to Maryland and Virginia, petitioned the government on this
subject, and were indulged not only with a grant of a great tract of
ground to the southward of Pennsylvania, which they promised to settle,
but also with an exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians on
the banks of the river Ohio. This design no sooner transpired, than
the French governor of Canada took the alarm, and wrote letters to the
governors of New York and Pennsylvania giving them to understand, that
as the English inland traders had encroached on the French territories
and privileges, by trading with the Indians under the protection of his
sovereign, he would seize them wherever they co